How To Become A Hacker In 15 Minutes -- Or In 140 Characters Or Less

Security firm to tweet tips on how consumers should think like hackers to protect themselves

Now there's another calling for Joe the Plumber: A security firm tomorrow will teach its Twitter followers how to become a hacker -- or at least how to think like one.

Ligatt Security International's Twitter campaign, called "How To Become A Hacker in 15 Minutes," is aimed at explaining to consumers how hackers operate so they can avoid becoming victims. "You don't have to be a computer security expert or an IT manager or really have a big knowledge of security and computers. You could be like 'Joe the Plumber.' So we're going to teach you exactly, step-by-step, on how it happens and what you can do," Gregory Evans, said CEO of Ligatt, in an interview with a local television station.

The security firm will tweet daily tips on how an attacker could break into a user's wireless network, find someone via his or her email address, and break into a PC to steal personal information. The tweets from Ligatt will include instructions on how attackers do their dirty deeds and how to protect yourself from such attacks.

Ligatt's hacker education initiative follows a long line of security firms finding ways to reach out to the general public and tutor users on the risks of cybercrime. "It takes a hacker to know a hacker," said Ligatt's Evans in a statement. "Cybercrimes, such as identity theft, are at an all time high. I want to educate my consumer base about these issues, as well as provide them with daily tips on how to protect their personal information."

Meanwhile, the publicly traded firm announced yesterday that it will buy back its shares on the open market and via private individuals in an effort to boost its share price.

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Kelly Jackson Higgins is Executive Editor at DarkReading.com. She is an award-winning veteran technology and business journalist with more than two decades of experience in reporting and editing for various publications, including Network Computing, Secure Enterprise ... View Full Bio

Published: 2015-03-03Off-by-one error in the ecryptfs_decode_from_filename function in fs/ecryptfs/crypto.c in the eCryptfs subsystem in the Linux kernel before 3.18.2 allows local users to cause a denial of service (buffer overflow and system crash) or possibly gain privileges via a crafted filename.

Published: 2015-03-03** REJECT ** DO NOT USE THIS CANDIDATE NUMBER. ConsultIDs: none. Reason: This candidate was withdrawn by its CNA. Further investigation showed that it was not a security issue in customer-controlled software. Notes: none.

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